After 'cancer is karma' remark, Baba Ramdev to inaugurate research conference at IIT Madras

CHENNAI: Baba Ramdev, who had claimed that cancer is divine justice for sins committed, has been invited as the chief guest at the 7th International Translational Cancer Research Conference hosted by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras on February 08, 2018.

The conference to be held in association with the University of Texas, on the theme Cancer prevention and treatment: From Ancient Medicine to Modern Medicine, is headed by a committee that comprises of eminent scholars and oncologists including Rajesh Kumar Grover, director and chief executive officer of Delhi State Cancer Institute and Ravi Mehrotra, director of National Institute of Cancer Prevention & Research.

In November 2017, Baba Ramdev had voiced his agreement to Assam health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s statement that people bear and endure for what they do in their life after Sarma was vehemently criticised for saying that cancer is the result of sins committed in past life.

Ramdev had said: “Everything is related to karma, our birth and death are related to karma. Several reasons cause diseases and one among them is karma."

Previously, Ramdev had courted controversy over his claims that he had cured over 1,000 cancer and HIV patients through of the practice of yoga and concoctions marketed by his pharmacy Patanjali.

The credibility of one of the organisers of the event B Aggarwal is also under the scanner as he has had to retract 18 of his papers following an investigation into his work by his former employer MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas, according to Retraction Watch (RW). RW is a blog that reports on retractions of scientific papers ‘to increase the transparency of the retraction process’.

Aggarwal was named by Thomson Reuters Web of Science as one among the ‘World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds’ in 2015 and in the same year he also made it to the list of individual researchers who racked up the most retractions.